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You will need to check the server error log files for the new site in order to pick these up, if this hasn't been detected in WMT.

Guys,

My Blogguest was confirmed as the penalised site - http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-weve-taken-action-large-guest-blog-network-187028

Moz can only show you traffic data once you have connected your profile with Google Analytics, however in saying this my understanding is that it is only for organic search and social.

I'm afraid it would be difficult to get the direct traffic estimates for a specific site alone unless you are getting referral traffic or actually have their web analytics data. However in saying this competitor intelligence tools like similar web and SEM Rush provide broad traffic website estimates.

Guys you should check out Dr Pete's post which Moz recently published today. The study actually outlines that the Title get's truncated on average after 50 characters; and with titles with full caps 44 characters.

http://moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool

I guess Google at the end of the day is trying to get users to write more meaningful titles, and the SERP redesign is just a step in the process.

Regards,

Vahe

Hi Bob,

Just to extend on Jane's point and answer your question - if you 301 redirected every single page on your site, it would overtime slow down your website and if a lot of those pages don't have strong authority then it might be detected and potentially harm your sites rankings. A link to a quora post below provides additional reasons.

http://www.quora.com/Why-should-one-avoid-overusing-301-redirects

Alot of search bar functions really don't provide accurate results, hence I would agree with you on not having this. Focus on good SEO. Organising blog posts into specific categories and then proper internal linking to encourage site dwell time and utlimately where you would like to end up is far more valuable (but more work).

Tim,

From my understanding who has a Google Account and sign up to Google Keyword planner can use the tool for free.

Hence it can be something which can be used by all.

Thomas,

I reckon this is just a geo personalisation factor and not an issue with site authority or optimisation. What I mean by this is, is that because you are based in the US and the IEEE US website is more strongly associated with a US audience, then Google is likely to rank the US domain first.

When I do a Google US search I see the exact same "issue" issue you are having - https://www.google.com/search?q=ieee&gl=us&pws=0

But I don't see this issue here when searching from Australia - https://www.google.com.au/search?q=ieee&pws=0. In fact the US domain doesn't appear at all on the first page.

To have the IEEE domain outranking over the US, there are two on-page elements you could potentially focus on:

1. Content - IEEE USA has a alot more content implicitly targeting "IEEE" on the homepage. Providing overview content about the organisation, can probably help with providing context and initial value to users to define a brief org background and how they can use the site.

2. Cannonicalisation - Cross link between all IEEE owned websites (maybe in the footer) to provide signals to Google that these sites all essentially sit under the IEEE brand. And because the IEEE.org site is the most authoritative, there is  a higher likeliehood of the site outranking the other.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Vahe

Hey Bob,

If these pages have been clearly hidden in the first place, then from my perspective  I already see no value in these pages.

Having non-important pages returning 404 error pages is ok. We only maintain the existing link juice or page authority for pages that have been taken down or reoptimised, in order to maintain existing SEO efforts or to direct users to an alternative page.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Vahe

You can do two things in Google Webmaster tools  to identify how long it will take for a page to index or even speed up the process of re indexation:

1. Use Google's crawl rate and indexation reports

2) google tools fetch as googlebot

Hi Samuel,

Text links will definently pass more link juice than an image due to the fact that crawlers can better read the html text than alt attribute from an image, as it is more difficult to parse.

Also in my experience I have found people linking to the site using an image really do not put an alt attribute

Hope this helps,

Vahe

From looking at Google Webmaster Tools forums, they have said you can have a maximum of 50,000 URLs which I am assuming applies when you create a video sitemap.

There are software/tools which you can use to create specific video sitemaps online. Here's a page I found to create video sitempas using A1 sitemap generator - http://www.microsystools.com/products/sitemap-generator/help/video-xml-sitemaps/

Make sure that you review the thumbnails and meta data used as it is important for how it appears in SERPs and the nature of users click through.

Other resources

• Creating sitemaps using externally hosted videos - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/video-sitemap-guide-for-vimeo-and-youtube a cool one from one of the Mozzers
• Here was a previous QA post on video sitempas - http://www.seomoz.org/q/video-sitemaps

Hope this helps,

Vahe

Kathy,

You will actually be doing your site a favour should you decide to change your URLs. Having static instead of dynamic URLs will not only make it easier for search engines to crawl and index the URL in SERPs, but make it easier for users to also link to the site. This should negate some of the loss of linking URLs that you will encounter. Also as you said keywords in the URLs are a major plus.

Before you make any URL changes, it is crucial for you  to take the following steps for minimising the impact for your sites traffic:

• List where the old URLs are being linked within the site (your internal URLs)
• List where the old URLs are being linked from externally (people linking to your pages).
• Create a separate sitemap XML file for the new site URL structure
• Implement your 301 redirects using regex on your htacess file
• Make sure you exactly match your old pages to the relevant new pages when 301 redirecting. Most people would get lazy and redirect to the home or category level pages.
• Check for any pages not properly 301 redirected internally by  looking at the number of 404s and broken links applicable to your site.

Once you do change over the URLs start updating the old urls linking between your sites pages. Over the long term you would then need to contact the websites which have used the old URLs and ask them to update to the new version. Leave your old XML sitemap file applicable in both Bing and Google Webmaster Tools until you see them both indexing most (if not all) your new URL pages from your newly created sitemap.

Tools that I would use for the following steps could be XENU or screaming frog (my favorite).

Hope this helps

In the standard reporting tab, Under the audience tab click overview. On the line graph (on the right) there's an option called graph by. Click on the drop down and there's the hourly option.

The link operator is fairly limited. I would suggest pulling the external referring domain report for Majestic or if you are an SEOmoz pro member, use OSE's in combination with GWT external link reports to pull the list of sites.

However to be honest you will not be able to get all of these results as most of them might be removed or so low value that it wouldn't get picked up by these tools.

Hope this helps,

Vahe

Ryan,

htaccess is the best way to go. The truth is it could potentially slow down your site due to the many server requests applicable. 250 is not too bad. However there are alternatives you can consider for speeding up your site.

(1) If your site has other aspects which are slowing down the site, why not improve on those elemtn

(2) Host your sites assets on a CDN, makes your site alot faster.

(3) If your old pages have very low authority use regex and redirect them to the relevant category page, rather than mapping them to the alternative new page. I wouldn't recommend this unless you really have time restrictions.

Make sure you however update the broken links for the old page to the relevant new page for both internal linking & external linking purposes.

Hope this helps.

Hi Erik, If there is a good intent (which there is), this is normal. It's similar when SEOmoz will record the number of 301's, you are looking to see whether or not what you have implemented has actually been noticed. In general for your scenario I would have done a 301 redirect, using the htaccess file to strengthen the domain authority. In addition, Erik check out Google Webmaster Tools to ensure any other duplicate page titles are not appearing for the site. Hope this helps, Vahe

There is no hard evidence suggesting that one is better than the other, in terms of value. However consider this, the more people add you to their circles will increase the likeliehood of people +1ing your home page. So focus on providing quality content to like minded people. More importantly, spend time finding the people you wish to share the content with. Hope this helps, Vahe

It would be better to use the complete address for the following reasons:

(1) This can be cited across other websites, which can help your site build more links

(2) Depending on the URL shortner service (in this instance Google does), does/doesnot contain a 301 redirect, which means either way you would be loosing some link juice value you would have otherwise received for a page.

Hope this helps,

Vahe

If you purchase the paid version ($20) you can create an XML sitemap for unlimited number of pages - http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/standalone-google-sitemap-generator.html Also you can use other software i.e. a1 sitemap generator or crawler based software such as Xenu or Screaming frog to create your XML sitemap. However my recommendation would be for you to create individual XML sitemaps per category. Whilst it is not necessary, it will improve the likeliehood of search crawlers better understanding your sites hierarchy, according by product platform. This will help search engines index the maximum number of pages possible. Don't forget to also create an image sitemap. Hope this helps, Vahe